By submitting this form you agree to receive communications from Gotham Studios Inc.
Sell the moment, not just the product.
Some products are not really a product at all. They are an experience. A restaurant is not selling a meal, it’s selling a fun night out with good company. A snack brand is not selling calories, it’s selling the moment someone actually enjoys it. When you sell an experience, a photo of the product alone leaves out the best part: the people. That is what lifestyle photography captures. At Gotham Studios, our food and beverage lifestyle photography puts real people in real settings, people who are enjoying your product the way your customers actually would. It’s the difference between showing what you sell and showing why anyone wants it.
What is lifestyle food and beverage photography?
Any image with people in it is a lifestyle image. Lifestyle photography is where your potential customers get to see themselves enjoying your product in a realistic setting. Instead of a product on a clean background, it’s real settings, real locations, and real people in the scene: the backyard barbecue, the rec room, the table at your restaurant. People connect with people, and seeing someone enjoy your product makes it instantly more relatable.
Why invest in lifestyle photography?
Because sharing our experiences is how we connect with each other. For a restaurant, the reason someone goes out is to have a good time together, so that is exactly what we capture: the atmosphere, the company, the feeling of being there. For a CPG brand, a person in the frame helps a shopper picture your product in their own life, at their own table, on their own beach day. Product shots inform, whereas lifestyle shots make someone want in.
Built for food brands and hospitality
Lifestyle photography works for two kinds of clients, and we shoot for both. For CPG food and beverage brands, we put your product where it is actually enjoyed: a home kitchen, a park, a beach, wherever your customer would reach for it. The setting is the heart of in-use beverage photography and branded food photography. Hospitality photography, restaurant lifestyle photography, cafe lifestyle photography, brewery lifestyle photography, coffee shop lifestyle photos, cocktail lifestyle photography, and full dining lifestyle photography all live here as well.
A look that matches your brand
Lifestyle is about matching one mood in particular: your mood. We build the feel around your brand, and we have shot the full range: warm and authentic for a backyard barbecue, energetic and social for a rec room, premium and aspirational for the dining outlets at Hard Rock. We start from who your customer is and what they should feel, then light, style, and cast to match. The result is authentic food photography that still looks polished, ready for a food brand campaign or an everyday post.
Food expertise meets real production
Most lifestyle shoots are handled one of two ways, and both fall short. The first is a food photographer who can style a plate but struggles the moment there are people, talent, and a scene. The other is a general crew that can light a room but doesn’t know how to make the food look good. We sit in the overlap. Gotham Studios performs genuine food styling photography and has the muscle of a full production, talent, lighting, larger scenes, and the crew to run them, so the food looks incredible and the moment feels real. We can even fold food-only hero shots into the same shoot.
We shoot where the moment lives
Lifestyle happens on location, not in a studio. For a CPG brand, we scout and source the right home, park, or setting. For a restaurant, we shoot in your venue and work around your business: for Cineplex, we shot overnight in their VIP dining room so we could stage the full scene without interrupting service. When a scene calls for a fully custom set, we can build in studio, but the goal is always a real, believable moment. No matter what, we scout every location in advance.
Our Process:
We follow a simple, well-tested approach to ensure every shot is planned and executed with precision:
Discovery Call
We learn your brand, your customer, and the feeling the images need to create.
Concept & Casting
We plan the scenes, run the casting call, and present talent options for you to choose.
Pre-Production
We scout the location, plan wardrobe and props, and line up the crew and food stylist.
Production
We shoot on location, scene by scene, with a food stylist on set to make every dish look its best.
Edit & Delivery
We retouch the hero image from each scene and deliver a library of angles and variations.
What Our Clients
Are
Saying About Us
Chicken Farmers of Canada have had the pleasure of working closely with the Gotham Studios team for the past two years and they’ve really helped us take our recipe and food photo and video content to the next level. Their team is knowledgeable an knows how to make recipes and food look great! Thanks to their remote production capabilities and streamlined processes, our team has been able to seamlessly oversee filming and photography sessions without ever leaving our Ottawa offices. I would highly recommend working with Gotham.
JJ Hochrein
Director, Brand Marketing
Chicken Farmers of Canada
Working with Gotham Studios gave us a turn-key production solution to quickly scale up our content library with high quality assets which our internal team was able to leverage to spin up ads, posts, and content across all of our organic and paid channels.
Corey Dubeau
Chief Marketing Officer
Pulp & Press
We’ve worked with the team at Gotham Studios on multiple occasions. They’ve shot food photography for us, images in our plant, and at our farms on Manitoulin Island. Nick, Chris, and the rest of the team are always responsive, professional, and easy to work with. We are planning to work with Gotham for more shoots in the future.
Harrison Cole
Owner
Cole Munro
Selected Work
Frequently Asked Questions
It’s where your potential customers get to see themselves enjoying your product and the lifestyle around it. Any shot with people in it is a lifestyle image, real people, in real scenes, living the food life your brand is part of.
The setting is the main thing. Studio and product photography isolate the item on a clean background. Lifestyle shows real settings, real locations, and real people in the scene, so shoppers feel the experience instead of just seeing the product.
We provide everything, soup to nuts. We run the casting call and present talent options for you to choose. Wardrobe scales to your budget: at a minimum we guide talent on what to bring, and when there is room we bring in a wardrobe stylist to source outfits.
On location, almost always. We shoot CPG products in real settings like homes, parks, and beaches, and we shoot restaurants, cafes, and breweries in their own venue. We can build a custom studio set when a scene truly needs it, and we scout every location in advance.
Always. Even in a client's restaurant with their own chef on hand, we bring- or strongly recommend - a food stylist. Making food look its best on camera is its own craft, and it is the difference between good and great.
We think in scenes, not image counts. A typical day covers around eight scenes, each delivering one hero image plus a library of close-ups, angles, and variations. It is about the quality of each scene, not a raw number. If pure volume is your goal, lifestyle may not be the right format, and we will point you to one that is.
Our standard usage covers your website, food social media photography and posts, and in-store print, everything most restaurant and food marketing needs. Broadcast, out-of-home like billboards, and large or global paid campaigns carry extended licensing, which we quote up front so there are no surprises.
Lifestyle is quoted per shoot, because cost tracks the number of scenes, the amount of talent, the location, and the crew. A typical production day includes lead and background talent, a photographer, a food stylist, and a lighting crew. Tell us the scenes you want and we will build the budget around them.
Absolutely, and it is a great way to get more from a shoot once the talent and location are set, ideal for food and drink content creation and restaurant social media content. It is a give and take, though: when the video team steps in, we capture fewer photo setups, so we plan that balance with you up front.
Let's put your product in the moment.
Fill out the form below and we will reach out to schedule your discovery call.
Contact a Producer